WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) and it is undoubtedly excellent as a dental blogging platform<\/a>. But is it as good as other CMS for website publishing? Many seasoned web professionals think not. Here are some of the areas where WordPress comes unstuck and where other systems offer a better alternative for managing website content….<\/p>\n <\/p>\n WordPress was not built from the ground up for managing website content – it was built for managing blogging which is quite different. Over the last few years, WordPress has been adapted to cater for more traditional website publishing albeit in quite a quirky way. Many, including ourselves, find the administration interface unintuitive when compared to other systems. Whenever you use it for tasks other than blogging, it tends to feel like you are using a “bolt-on” rather than something that was designed-in.<\/p>\n The WordPress plugins are add-on tools that facilitate certain tasks in your web publishing, from creating contact forms to adding SEO components to your posts. However, whilst some of the plugins are professionally supported and get upgraded when the main platform does, its certainly not the case for all. A high-profile web author recently noted that with WordPress, you select a small range of plugins that you think are robust, then cross your fingers and hope that they keep working. Ouch.<\/p>\n All dynamic content systems are subject to regular updates to keep them secure, however WordPress suffers more than most for this. You really have to stay on top of the core files and the plugins to make sure they remain up-to-date and secure.<\/p>\n Webmasters new to WordPress are often disappointed by the lack of basic functionality in the text editor which misses some really basic and important functions. Publishing a great content page in WordPress is not easy unless you have a lot of experience and no mean amount of skill.<\/p>\n What do I mean by “work flow” – well this is simply the process for updating a page and how easy and effective it actually is. This is our biggest bugbear with WordPress – the user work flow is decidedly poor and clunky. To make an edit to a page often entails going to several different admin. areas to complete – the page itself, a plugin, a theme setting…. you get the idea. Other CMS are way more effective for this. If you are a “novice” user, navigating these elements is akin to learning to drive all over again – no intuitive “point and click” here I’m afraid.<\/p>\n Maybe not a big issue but if you have an on-site search tool, chances are that you’d like it to work well. WordPress’s doesn’t.<\/p>\n There are a number of other infuriating things about WordPress that restrict it from being an ‘A Grade’ website content platform e.g. confused social sharing functionality, user permissions oddness, quirky admin. menus etc but I won’t cover those here.<\/p>\nThe WordPress platform has evolved from a blogging system<\/h3>\n
The “Plugins”<\/h3>\n
Security and updates<\/h3>\n
The WYSIWYG editor is very basic – in fact unchanged over the last ten years<\/h3>\n
The work flow<\/h3>\n
The on-site search tool<\/h3>\n
Am I being too harsh?<\/h3>\n